


All The Things You'll Never Be

by Lexigent



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 17:25:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6124401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexigent/pseuds/Lexigent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memories are all Simon has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Things You'll Never Be

**Author's Note:**

> Sad futurefic.

A memory is all that remains of River-that-was, in the end. There are glimpses, every so often; lucid snatches of time when she talks to Simon like her thoughts flow through linear patterns and he forgets how irreparably beyond reach her mind is these days. Only yesterday, he watched her in the front room, dancing a ballet piece she studied when they were in high school. She seemed to float above the ground then; in a world of her own and the expression on her face was one of peace and tranquillity.

He plays games with her, children's card games and checkers - he tried chess once but that went very badly - and she laughs when she beats him, as she always did.

Those are the good times, painfully like a time before the Academy, before their family fell apart, before Serenity, even. Simon treasures these moments like gold dust for holding on to them when she wakes up screaming and drenched with sweat in the night and claws her nails into his face with force until he manages to calm her down.

There isn't a day goes by that he doesn't do research, doesn't try to understand yet another aspect of her condition in the vain hope that he will have some means to make his sister better, more comfortable in her own mind. But the longer it goes on, the longer his studies remain fruitless, the more he comes to realise that the memories may be all he has; that the girl who was his sister is not coming back.

Simon has never been one to give up hope, but as he gives her a sedative after yet another bad turn, he wonders how much longer he can keep doing this.

But then she turns her face with the ghost of a smile on her lips and something in his chest constricts. He'll always love her more than anyone else, and he'll keep fighting.

Even if it destroys him.


End file.
